by May, W. J.
They snatched up their coats and ran for the door, but even as they did a little voice kept nagging in the back of Rae’s mind. He knew Julian would eventually wake up and track him. If he was on the wrong side, why didn’t he kill Julian in his sleep? Why just knock him out? She was about to voice these concerns, but something about the look on Devon’s face made her pause.
Instead, she kept silent while the four of them leapt into the car and headed to Waterloo Station.
Even with some supernatural help, they made it through the ticket barrier and onto the platform just as the train was pulling away.
“Damn it!” Devon cursed, startling several passing pedestrians. He folded his hands behind his head and stared at the departing train like he was seriously considering running it down.
“It’s okay,” Molly said quickly, “we’ll just get him at the next stop. Jules, where is he going next?”
Julian’s eyes went white, but Rae put a hand on his arm. “I don’t think that’s going to be necessary,” she said.
The three of them followed her gaze and froze dead in their tracks.
Gabriel was sitting on a bench at the far end of the platform, staring at the departing train like he, too, couldn’t believe he wasn’t on it. Then, almost as if he could feel their eyes upon him, he turned slowly and met their gaze.
His shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath, and, without a word he pushed himself to his feet and started walking over.
“I’m going to kill him,” Devon muttered, eyes locking on him with pure hatred. “I’m going to kill him right here in public.”
Molly and Julian looked like they were right there with him, but Rae shook her head.
“Why didn’t he get on the train?”
When Gabriel finally got close enough to hear, she repeated the question again.
“Why didn’t you get on the train?”
For the first time since she’d met him, all the cocky arrogance was gone. The cool self-confidence had vanished with the train, and the young man standing in front of her looked as pale and lost as a child.
They locked eyes for the briefest of moments before he slowly shook his head.
“I…I don’t know…”
Chapter 12
After all the years she had known him, Rae never knew Devon could hit so hard.
There was a sharp cry, and Gabriel spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.
Devon stepped forward again and hissed, “Who do you work for! Is it the Privy Council? Or Cromfield?!”
Before Gabriel could answer, Devon hit him again. Rae turned away.
He had put up no fight at all at the train station, following along beside them with his mouth shut and Molly’s electric little fingers placed firmly on his back. When they led him to the penthouse and tied him to a recliner, he’d said not a word. Even when they bound him there with rope and carefully removed all traces of metal from their clothing, he kept his silence.
To be honest, he looked as overwhelmed by the whole thing as they were, silently watching with wide eyes as they tightly strapped his arms and legs to the chair.
When they were finished, Devon and Julian stepped forward, while Molly and Rae took a deliberate step back.
Rae shook her head. “You boys have obviously done this sort of thing before.”
“Twice,” Julian had grimaced at the memory.
Molly shuddered and sat down silently on the other side of the room, covering her face with her hands as Devon hit Gabriel again and again.
“Cromfield,” Gabriel gasped, when he was finally able to catch his breath. “I work for Cromfield. Not Carter—not the Privy Council. That was the cover. Cromfield wanted me on the inside.” He eyed Devon’s raised fist warily, but with the look of someone who wouldn’t resist.
“And you give this information up so easily?” Devon shook his sore hand. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Gabriel said and glanced at Rae as he said this last part.
She found she was having a hard time looking at his beautiful, bloodied face.
“I really wouldn’t,” Devon growled, stepping firmly in between them. “How long?”
Gabriel snapped his eyes back to his interrogator. “What?”
“How long have you been working for Cromfield? Did he just recruit you, or—”
“He didn’t recruit me.”
“You went willingly?” Molly shrieked.
“No!” Gabriel shook his head. “Since I was a kid, too little to remember when.” Shallow, jerking breaths raised his shoulders quickly up and down. “That’s how Cromfield recruits people—he does it when they’re children. I was four or five.”
For the first time, Devon paused. Julian’s brow creased with forbidden sympathy, and Rae could tell he was thinking about Angel, but by the time he’d turned to Devon, Devon had already composed himself and was ready with the next question.
“So why did he send you here? Be specific.”
Rae shuddered at his tone. In all her years, she’d never heard Devon sound like that. She saw it now—why the Council had always considered him such a valuable resource, such a dangerous agent—the one tasked with the most lethal assignments. The valuable part, she’d understood immediately. Devon was strong, smart, and quick on his feet. But dangerous? As she watched him standing there, looming over Gabriel with a trail of blood dripping slowly down his fist, she realized that she had never once seen him as dangerous.
Until now.
“He knew you and Julian were the ones tasked with hiding the pieces of the device. He knew that if he stole one, Carter would eventually send you to collect the rest of them before he could do it first. And in doing so…he thought that you would find the last of the four, especially the one he was never able to locate himself.”
“So he knew where the other two were this whole time? He’s just been biding his time, letting us do the dirty work for him, before you delivered the device?”
“…that was the plan.”
Devon raised his hand again, but Julian pushed him casually aside, squatting down in front of Gabriel’s chair. “So what went wrong? Back at Guilder—the trip-wire. That was you, wasn’t it?”
Rae looked up suddenly. She hadn’t even made that connection.
Gabriel sighed. “Yeah, that was me. It wasn’t that hard to do. When you left,” he glanced at Devon, “there was a power vacuum amongst the agents. It’s the reason I was able to rise to the top so fast. I bided my time, and it wasn’t long before Carter began to trust me, confide in me, even. He started to leak me bits of information, which I kept to myself; I knew it was a test.” He was speaking quickly now, in a soft, clipped monotone. It was as if the act of confessing was almost a relief to him. After all this time, all these secrets, he was finally free.
“Then one night, he called me into his office. After pouring me a drink, he told me all about your secret mission. About the hybrids and Cromfield and how he’d been trying to help you. He said you were coming back soon, and that Rae was going to be arrested. He asked me to break her out so you could continue on with your mission.”
“Which you then told to Cromfield,” Molly piped up from the corner. There was a dark look on her face that Rae had never seen before. It didn’t really seem to fit.
“He was pleased,” Gabriel said. There was a lifeless look about him whenever he mentioned Cromfield directly. A sort of shutting down that he had no control over. “I had placed myself in the perfect position to help you get the pieces, and then deliver them to him.”
Julian hadn’t moved an inch and his eyes bore into Gabriel’s as he re-asked his question.
“So why the trip-wire?”
For the first time, Gabriel was uncertain. His eyes darted frantically around the room, before coming to rest ever so briefly upon Rae. Then his shoulders fell with a whispered sigh. “I wasn’t supposed to do that,” he confessed. His voice was so soft they could barely hear it, and al
though Rae didn’t think he realized it himself, his hands had begun shaking. “Cromfield doesn’t want Rae hurt. He never has. Quite the contrary, actually. But Rae…” When he looked up at Devon, his face actually grimaced into an ironic smile. “You say that Rae is your whole life…? Well, she was mine too.”
Devon’s hand flew back in the air, but Julian caught him by the wrist. “Hear what he has to say,” he murmured.
But before Devon could answer, Rae pushed both boys out of the way and knelt down in front of Gabriel herself. Her eyes were stinging with angry, unshed tears as she stared him down. She didn’t know why she was feeling this way. She’d been burned and betrayed by the people around her since she first stepped into this crazy world. But, for whatever reason, this one felt different. This one felt personal.
She had trusted him. She had…she had let him in.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded in a soft, lethal tone.
A hint of the hurt she was feeling herself flickered across Gabriel’s face, but he checked himself quickly, staring at her instead with wide, wounded eyes. “You have no idea what it was like,” he breathed, “growing up in your shadow. Cromfield was the only family I ever had. He was everything I knew. But he didn’t need me. He didn’t care whether I made it past my sixth birthday. No, the only thing he ever cared about was you.”
He stared deep into Rae’s eyes and she stared back, just as transfixed. She had heard glimmers of this before. Seen flashes of it in Angel’s mind. But hearing Gabriel say it right to her face? She felt as though her heart was breaking.
“You were all he ever talked about, all I ever heard about. Day in, day out. Year after year. I was raised to be a tool, a simple tool whose sole purpose was helping him acquire you. After he did? Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t have kept me around much longer.”
Rae’s heart was pounding in her chest as she leaned closer. The two of them were almost touching when she murmured, “So you put the trip-wire there…”
A bloody tear ran down his cheek.
“…to kill you.”
* * *
The interrogation ended with those words.
Upon hearing them, Devon had broken a marble paperweight over Gabriel’s head. At first they’d thought he was dead, but he had a pulse—faint but steady. That being said, it was unlikely he would be waking up any time soon.
That didn’t stop Rae, however, from using Carter’s tatù to break into his thoughts.
When she’d done this with other people, her friends in training, her mother to help her get her memories back, even to find out the extent of Jennifer’s crimes, she’d always felt like an intruder. To glimpse a person’s inner-most thoughts, to peer inside their soul… It was an invasion that was never to be taken lightly, and one that she’d never quite been able to reconcile.
Until now.
She felt strangely justified seeing into Gabriel’s mind, even if he was passed out cold and had no idea she was doing it. The guy had tried to kill her. And he had done possibly irreparable harm to their cause. It was her duty to continue the interrogation, one-sided if necessary, and find out exactly what he was up to.
At least…that’s what she told her friends.
But the truth was that she needed to know. How could he do that to her? Why did he change his mind? He had the piece, she was just dangling here, they were alone…
What had happened?
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Julian asked quietly, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You know once you go in, there’s no going back.”
Rae nodded. “I’ll be fine.” She glanced up at Devon. “I promise.”
But from the second she put her hands on Gabriel’s face, she wasn’t fine.
Not by a long shot.
No amount of training or steeling of will could have possibly prepared her for the tangle of emotions she saw just behind those sparkling eyes. This was a boy who had never known love, who had never known safety or real happiness. He was taught from a young age that he was less. Less than the man he worked for. Less than the girl he was being groomed to ensnare. And he believed it.
He hid it masterfully beneath a careful façade of supreme confidence. Eventually, confidence wasn’t enough, and he got cocky. He trained harder and faster than anyone she’d ever seen in her entire life. Maybe if he did, Cromfield would finally take notice… finally see the worth in the little boy with the sad green eyes. But he never did. Years passed, and he never did.
Mixed in with the muddled flash of images, she saw a small white-haired girl that she had seen before. Angel. The love of Julian’s life. Gabriel’s only childhood companion.
Rae saw the look on Gabriel’s face when she herself had called Cromfield to tell him that Angel was dead; she’d died by Rae’s own hand. While Cromfield had been impassive, there was a cold fury on Gabriel’s face, the likes of which she had never seen.
It was then that the visions started changing, taking on a secretive and sinister tone.
In Gabriel’s mind—in his very heart—Rae was the bane of his entire existence. He didn’t blame Cromfield; he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried to despise him, the second he saw his terrifying master, he was just a five-year-old boy again. So he turned his rage to Rae instead.
Cromfield needed her alive? Well, Gabriel needed her dead.
So he plotted and schemed. Waited until the right moment to strike. It would be at Guilder, he had decided. He would set another alarm. One they didn’t know about. One that would isolate her from her friends while she was in a position of absolute vulnerability, with no tatùs.
He had been only mildly perturbed when he first met her. Did Cromfield ever say she was this beautiful? And funny! Besides Angel, he had never met a girl who could make him laugh. Yet the thing that had struck him most was her bravery. He had been forced into this tangled web of lies; he’d grown up without a choice. But Rae? She was choosing to fight it. Choosing to right the wrongs that had been done to her and her family.
And did he mention beautiful!? Did she have to be so —
But it didn’t matter. Because she had to die.
So he waited for them to go after the second piece. He waited through the agonizing time in Scotland. Watching her from the corner of his eye. Warming when she came into a room. Aching to his very bones when he watched her interacting with friends and family, two constructs he knew absolutely nothing about but secretly craved. Then there was the strange hardening in his chest when he watched her smile at Devon, slip her hand into his. After sleepless nights of wonder, he was finally able to identify it: jealousy.
But it didn’t matter. Because she had to die.
When it was finally the night of the mission, the night they were to break into Guilder, he’d thought he was ready. He’d done nothing but force himself to actively hate her the entire night before. As he paced over the grass, heading to where he was supposed to meet her, he had fixed his mind on nothing but Angel—his only friend who this girl had killed in cold blood. He’d thought he was ready. He’d felt ready. He’d felt ready for anything. But all that changed the second he’d peered through the bars and saw her hanging there.
She was crying.
Rae gasped aloud as she felt what had passed through his heart in that moment. It was like it had split in two: the man he was, and the man he wanted to be.
She’d handed him the piece, and he’d thought to himself: this could be so easy. Just walk away, walk away and tell Cromfield she fell. He’d be punished, surely, but not blamed. Then maybe his life could start to be what it was always meant to. Then maybe, he could start anew.
Except…she was crying.
Before he knew what he was doing, he’d placed the piece into his jacket, and was working on breaking down the bars. When she’d slipped from Devon’s hand, his own hand had flashed out of its own accord, holding on to hers as she dangled over the abyss.
What’re you doing, Gabriel?! Let go!
; But for the first time in his life, he couldn’t. He held on like his own life depended on it.
After that, it had been time to leave. He was obviously in way over his head here and had no idea what he was doing. These were…these were good people.
Rae saw flashes of Molly giggling, Julian laughing with Devon, her own blue eyes…
How could hurting these people be the right thing to do? If these were the good guys, what exactly did that make him?
He’d decided to walk away, deliver the piece to Cromfield, and simply disappear. Yet Rae saw the hesitation in every step of the plan. The way his hands had hovered over Julian’s throat before he simply knocked him out instead. The way he’d deliberately stopped from sabotaging their car to stop them from getting to the station on time. The way he’d watched the train pull slowly away from the platform…a single thought in his mind.
He wished he’d kissed Rae last night.
Rae pulled away with a gasp. A flood of tears poured down her face before she could stop them, and she found herself scrambling backwards, finally coming to a stop against the wall. Her friends stared at her with wide, worried eyes, and Devon took an automatic step forward.
“Sweetheart? What is it? What did you see?”
A rush of emotions coursed through her, all centered around one simple truth. But as her eyes travelled from Gabriel’s sleeping body to Devon’s worried face, she pushed them down. Down to the deepest part of her. Down so far that even she would never find them…
“He could have gone to Cromfield, but he stopped,” she panted, trying to collect herself. “I think…I think he’s wanted to get away for a long time—he just didn’t know it yet himself. He doesn’t know much about Cromfield’s plans, though. His only purpose was to get the pieces of the device.”
Devon was watching her carefully, his lovely eyes latched on to hers. He opened his mouth once to speak, but then thought better of it and took a seat on the sofa, turning to Julian instead.
Julian glanced at him in surprise but then started nodding quickly, trying to formulate some sort of plan. “Okay, so he doesn’t want to go back to Cromfield. What do we do with him? We can’t bring him to the Privy Council. It’s not like we can work with him, and we can’t just let him go free—”